In the beginning of June, Ellen Levine and I traveled to Istanbul, Turkey, to teach and to meet with students and colleagues from the European Graduate School’s programs in expressive arts. Turkey has been experiencing an intense conflict between an authoritarian Islamic government and those, especially younger and more urban people, who wish to keep the secular republic that Kemal Ataturk put into place almost a hundred years ago. This conflict came to a head last year in the battle over Gezi Park in Istanbul, when the government tried to turn a popular gathering place, one of the few spots that offered a respite from the intense flow of traffic and noise in the city, into a shopping mall designed in the shape of a barracks from the Ottoman period. A popular protest was harshly suppressed, and “Gezi” became the symbol for an upsurge of popular revolt that galvanized the country. After the crushing of the movement, many of our students and friends felt dispirited and were losing hope in the possibility of change in their country. When they invited us to visit, we felt we needed to go and support them – if nothing else, to make them feel that they were not alone. It didn’t hurt that Turkish food was one of our favourite cuisines, and that the hospitality of the people there was legendary. Indeed, they wined us and dined us, not letting us pay for meals, and treating us with great care and love. In return, we tried to use our skills as expressive arts trainers and teachers to help them find creative ways to respond to their situation. Our teaching began on a Friday afternoon at Bosphorus University, where Aylin Vartanyan, a student in the doctoral program at EGS (and now faculty member in the Conflict-transformation program) was teaching. Aylin particularly wanted us to speak to those of her students who were planning to go to Soma, the site of the recent mining disaster, where over three hundred men had lost their lives. The students wanted to work with the children who had lost their fathers and to help them to find a way to go on. I gave a lecture called “Improvising Freedom,” in which I talked about the necessity of letting go of an agenda when working with distressed communities and, instead, of listening to their stories and improvising ways to respond. Before the rest of the audience came for the lecture, Ellen and I talked with the students and listened to their hopes and fears about the future. Ellen in particular spoke about working with children and their families, since she has devoted her professional life to this. During the lecture itself, she engaged in improvisational art-making, something we have often done, though usually she paints while I talk. Since she was recovering from hand surgery for torn tendons on her right hand, she couldn’t paint but instead used images that we had asked the students to bring. She fashioned a box out of cardboard and then invited them to come up and attach their images to the box. When the lecture was finished, we asked the students for titles for the piece and whether this process of working had any message to give them about their plans to go to Soma. What stands out in our memory was the message of hope. Somehow working in this improvisational way had helped to restore their hope in their capacity to help – and also in the ability of the Soma community to find its own way of responding to the tragedy. The lecture itself was improvisational. I had written words on index cards that came to me when I thought about the theme and had distributed the cards to the audience. There were also several blank cards which could be used to bring up any word or concept that seemed appropriate. I then asked them to say the words on the cards when they wanted me to speak about them. In order to do this, they had to be sensitive to the flow of the discussion – and I had to be ready to respond to whatever was asked at that moment. By lecturing and making art in this way, we hoped to illustrate the possibility of finding an appropriate aesthetic response to whatever was given – something that we call in expressive arts our “aesthetic responsibility.” The protesters in Gezi Park and the nearby Taksim square had demonstrated this capacity in their own responses to the repression of the government. In particular, I remember the “Standing Man” – after the square had been violently cleared and all demonstrations banned, a lone individual came and stood there without moving. He was soon joined by others, and ultimately many came to join this silent and motionless display – something more moving than anything else that could have happened at that time. The day after the lecture, Ellen and I taught a workshop in Neutral Mask and Clown, two forms of improvisatory physical theatre, to a group many of whom had been active in the Gezi protests. Our friends who had invited us joined in as well. It was wonderful to see the pleasure that the participants experienced in these challenging forms of physical theatre. Ellen and I like to say that the bases for this work are play, complicity and pleasure. Perhaps that can be a foundation for a way of life as well. We ended our visit with a marvelous Armenian dinner cooked by Aylin’s mother, at which all the EGS people were present. We talked about the future of expressive arts in Turkey and the need to stay in touch with each other and with the wider community. Subsequently I received an email from a creative arts therapy trainer in Istanbul who had not heard of our visit and who wanted to invite us to teach. I found out that she didn’t know any of our friends there, I took the opportunity to copy my email response to her to everyone, suggesting that they form a wider network of support. I do believe that in community there is strength. After Istanbul, we traveled to the European Graduate School to teach in the expressive arts therapy masters and doctoral programs – our nineteenth year! Saas Fee, a small mountain village in the Alps that is car-free, is the opposite of Istanbul, but the same kind of creative community is working there. Students and faculty from all over the world are hoping to find the capacity for using their resources creatively to meet the challenges that face them in their work and in their lives. Of course, we also come across obstacles in this attempt – and some of the greatest ones come from ourselves. But to be in a creative learning environment encourages us to discover new ways of responding to difficulties and to take these responses back to our own communities. I see expressive arts as part of a wider movement in which freedom is understood not as something given but as something we make together by improvising responses to challenging situations. The impulse to freedom can never be completely extinguished. We are like brushfire – we can be stomped out but we will rise again. I hope we will continue to find new ways of responding to the restrictions that we face, ways that rely on our capacity to improvise freely and to live fully. And I hope we can use this capacity to help others make the same discovery. If we can play together, have complicity in our actions, and discover the pleasure that comes from spontaneity, we will always find a way. Thanks to Ezgi Icoz, Bihter Yasemin Kaya, Beliz Demircioglu Cihandide, and especially to Zeynep Evgin, Mada Ustaomeroglu, and Aylin Vartanyan who organized our visit and made us as happy as possible everyday!

On November 24, CREATE hosted a Volunteer Thank You Party at the home of Steve and Ellen Levine. There were many people who supported CEATE through a challenging year last year and we wanted to honor and celebrate their extraordinary dedication and support. We couldn’t have made it without our community behind us! Thanks again to everyone!

Steve and Ellen Levine were invited to Vancouver from November 9 to 19th to teach neutral mask and clown in a new expressive arts program founded by Heather Dawson, a highly experienced art therapist who received her Masters from EGS and is pursuing Doctoral studies at EGS as well. They worked with a group of 25 people in the first weekend and then a training group of ten people in the second weekend. As you can see from the pictures, the groups were lively, interesting and fun.

One of the finales of the summer school session is the student performance night. Here you can see the wide range of performances: poetry, singing, theatre, dance and visual projections. The last picture is the CAGS group which will return for their second summer next year.Another great summer in the wild and wacky world of the Alps!!

Another highlight of the second session was Paolo Knill’s 80th birthday celebration. Many guests including Shaun McNiff and Stan Strickland (jazz musician from Boston who is an expressive arts therapist) arrived to help with the festivities.

Elizabeth McKim

Every year, Steve and Ellen write, direct and perform in an original clown show which takes place after the graduation ceremony. The following was written by Steve to describe this year’s show:

Some of the inspiration for the show came from digital media and expressive arts courses at EGS and some from current political events, as you'll see below. The show was great fun. It started with the usual scenario: Max and Sadie (played by Steve and Ellen) arrive in Saas Fee to see their grandaughter Natalie (it used to be to see their daughter, but, as they say, times change). Max reminiscences about the old days, and he and Sadie start quarreling about things she wants to change that he wants to stay the same. He likes things in order - like in Russia, where they know how to have a strong leader - "Look!" A video projection on the large screen shows a clip below about Putin at a celebrity dinner playing the piano and singing "Blueberry Hill" (if you can believe it - totally ridiculous). Natalie says she has her own icon, and wants to change her name to hers: Nadezhda! At that point we showed a clip below from Pussy Riot's unauthorized and blasphemous anti-Putin performance in an Orthodox church in Moscow. For this, they have been charged are are in jail for the next year and a half.

Max is horrified, while Sadie loves them - so they start fighting again - until Nadezhda insists that they go to see a therapist - Dr. Putino! At this point we Skyped in one of our old clown buddies, Bruno Mock, who appeared on the large screen and lead us through three forms of therapy, each more catastrophic than the last: SOS (Solution-Oriented Solution), DDT (Dynamic Dance Therapy) and finally PLR (Past Life Regression). In the last one, Max and Sadie go back to three past lives in sequence, each of which ends in disaster: Louis XIV and Marie Antoinette, Abraham and Sarah, and finally a Neanderthal couple who can only grunt and chase each other around the stage. When Nadezhda finally wakes them up from their trance, Max admits that maybe the old days aren't as great as he thought. They all agree that it's time for a new sound. We then play the audio from the Anti Flag video "This is the New Sound," to which the performers and the audience all dance. Though we didn't play it, it's worth watching the video - did you ever think you'd see punk rockers being tortured by Muppets?

During the second session (July 11 to August 1), we had many special guests and events. In many of the pictures, you can see how we use the surrounding landscape as a space for learning and artistic exploration---sometimes sharing the landscape with....cows! We also have lectures and presentations. One such lecture involved Steve, Paul Antze (professor and colleague from York University) and Ellen painting while they talked. The topic was Expressive Arts and Ecology. Here are some of Ellen’s reflections on the painting and the formation of the painting.

I had the impulse to use trash and garbage from around the town in the painting but, when I went searching for some, I couldn’t find anything but a few cigarette butts!! It really is clean in Switzerland! However, I did find a construction site where they had thrown away some burned out asphalt from an old roof. I picked some of that up, thinking it would be interesting to incorporate it into the painting. I also decided to challenge myself to only use black and white paint. Facing these constraints, I feel pleased with the result......for me it speaks to something about protecting the vulnerable spaces from contamination.

Here you can see the CAGS group (pre-doctoral students) using tables to construct group installations. This happened in one of the first classes and it became a way for students to connect and to get to know each other. We gave each group a “key word” and had them bring in materials from outside to add to the construction. Some of the key words were: “hope,” “art,” “play,” and “imagination.” After making the construction, the students developed performances to present to the whole group.

In the first period (from June 13 to July 4), there were a few highlights: a lecture by Steve with art-making by Ellen, celebrating the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Cage. Here is Steve talking about the lecture.

I was talking on the 100th anniversary of Cage's birth, reflecting on his work and on the concept of improvisation as it happens in the expressive arts. I started out my giving some biographical information about Cage and the development of his music, pointing out that he actually hated improvisation for most of his life. He felt that it was too much tied to the performer's tastes and memories, and instead preferred chance procedures in the composition and performance of his work.

Then I conducted a performance of cage's 4'33'', with Paolo Knill on the piano. You can see Cage performing it on youtube. Afterwards, I showed one eminent music critic's views of the piece (google "Hitler's opinion of John Cage's 4'33'" on youtube).

Then I talked about the idea of improvisation in expressive arts and related it to similar concepts from other frameworks, like the Taoist wu-wei (non-doing) and Heidegger's Gelassenheit (letting-be).

At that point I discussed Cage's change of mind - in his late seventies, he developed a new appreciation for improvisation, and did an improvised lecture called How To Get Started (go to www.howtogetstarted.com). I gave a similar lecture - the method is to take ten topics of interest and talk (in a random order) for three minutes in an improvised way on each one, recording the first one and playing it back during the second, then playing back both the first and second during the third, etc. In the end there are ten takes of thirty-three minutes in total all playing at the same time.

While I was talking, Ellen was engaged in an analogous process using visual art materials - selecting objects from ten different containers and working with them to create an improvised structure in which all of them were involved. We projected Ellen's image on a big screen to make it easier to see.Now here's where it gets interesting: Because we only had two speakers (Cage had ten channels to broadcast on), we decided it would be good to put away all the chairs and have the audience (students and faculty) walk around to hear the sounds from the different speakers. What we didn't realize was that by having them move around, they actually became part of the performance (something that Cage believed would happen in any case). It was like a dance - and a beautiful one at that. Since EGS students are such creative types, many of their movements were like dancing, and the audience as a whole became a dance ensemble in a multi-media presentation.

During this first session at EGS, we also had some music and poetry performances. Here you see Paolo Knill’s daughter-in-law, Ursina, performing in the church of the town of Saas Fee, where the school is located. Ursina has a classically trained voice and she also uses her voice in many strange and interesting ways. We also had a poetry evening in which Steve performed with Margo Fuchs Knill and Paolo provided the musical interludes and accompaniment.

The blog starts where we left off last time......with the spring in Toronto and the annual CREATE (formerly ISIS Canada) graduation ceremony on Ward’s Island, at the Clubhouse.

Seven women graduated in 2013 and the ceremony was colorful, warm and touching. The group did a performance using their painting as a kick-off for improvisational singing.

Shortly after the graduation, we left Toronto for our island and the ocean for a few weeks of rest. On June 9th, we left the island to go to Switzerland where we have been teaching every summer for the last 17 years!

Before we begin looking back over the last few months, our start this year has been terrific!! We have the biggest entering first year class in the history of the program---22 new students. The group is so large that we decided to divide it into two classes. So we will have a Tuesday evening and a Thursday evening first year class this year!!

Welcome to all the new first year students and welcome back to the returning third year class. We all got together for a Community Gathering on October 13th and 14th and it was a great kick-off for the year.